Pure
by iknowhowmystoryends
Summary: Benny just wanted to get out of Purgatory. He ended up following Dean Winchester through Purgatory on a quest to find an insane angel. Somewhere along the way, the human who hunted like a monster became something like a brother.


Benny didn't give much thought to the rumors of a human in Purgatory at first. If something was too good to be true, it was, and a way out was definitely a pipe dream.

The whispers didn't stop as time went on.

The vampires Benny hunted with ran into more and more creatures that swore they'd seen or smelled or heard an actual human.

_He's as much a monster as we are._

_ Don't even try. He'll kill you._

_ He's fucking scary, is what he is._

_ He's looking for his angel. Always asking where the angel is. He kills you if you don't tell him_.

It was still too good to be true. Benny steered his group in the direction the human was rumored to be in just in case.

The human was covered in dirt and several types of blood. His smile was as inhuman as Benny's bared fangs. He killed like he had been born to it, hunted like it was the only thing he knew how to do. The human's eyes were as cold as anything Benny had seen down here.

The human said his name was Dean.

And Deanwasn't leaving until he had his angel back.

Benny revised his opinion on the human being too good to be true.

Dean didn't sleep for a few days after he and Benny agreed to get out together. Benny didn't worry about it at first. Benny didn't sleep either.

Benny got worried when Dean started slowing down, though. They took the heads off a few Leviathans and Dean stumbled as they started running from the bodies.

Benny shot him a look. Stumbling in Purgatory was as good as admitting you were easy prey.

"You good there, friend?"

"Fine," Dean snapped.

Benny kept his peace until he caught Dean yawning a few hours later.

"You need to sleep?"

The human's glare should have taken the skin off Benny's face. Benny pressed on.

"You're no use to me or the angel dead."

"I don't trust you."

"That's a problem you're going to have to get over," Benny drawled. "I got no reason to kill you when I need you alive."

Dean didn't respond.

"Climb a tree or something if you're gonna be paranoid, Jesus. I ain't your goddamn nanny."

It took a few seconds for Dean to capitulate. Benny didn't roll his eyes, but he came close.

"Fine," Dean muttered. The human pulled himself up into the fork of the nearest tree and climbed upwards.

Benny settled against the trunk of the tree.

It took another week and several close calls before Dean stopped climbing trees to sleep. Sometime between the pack of werewolves and the giant spider, Dean and Benny started trusting each other.

"Why do you want to get out?" Dean asked, propped against the wall of the shallow cave they'd found, his teeth stained red from the rougaru they'd tracked, asked about the angel, and eaten. "Nothing else here seems to want to."

"I'm not them," Benny said. He was well-fed and felt a little more open than usual. "I still have some... unfinished business. What about you? Why ain't you given up and died yet?"

"I gotta get back to Sammy."

"Your girl?"

Dean snorted. "My brother."

Benny nodded. "And the angel? Why are you looking for him?"

Dean ate another piece of meat off the tip of his knife. His eyes were more distant than usual. "Cas is… Cas was family, once."

"And now?"

"I don't know."

Benny didn't push the issue and Dean didn't climb a tree that night.

Maybe it was the way that Dean had said Sammy like it mattered more than anything else, or maybe it was the way Dean asked about the angel with increasing desperation in his eyes, but Benny thought family was the highest praise Dean had for someone, that Dean's concept of family was the reason he hadn't died yet.

Benny started calling Dean _brother_ a few days later. Dean didn't say anything, although Benny was willing to admit that might have been because they'd been running for their lives at the time.

As time dragged on and the mysterious Cas remained lost, Dean started to go downhill.

Benny would not have said that he had any lines left, after that long in Purgatory, but Dean's methods of getting information almost made him reconsider his alliance with the human. There were only so many times he could watch the human slowly deconstruct a monster that begged for mercy before Benny started wondering if that would be him screaming one day.

Dean always tortured with horrible grace and steadiness. Benny watched the human's back and tried not to watch what he was doing.

Dean stopped sleeping as much after he started torturing. He'd stay awake until Benny told him to sleep and then he'd wake up gasping or screaming. Sometimes Dean woke up yelling for Sam, sometimes Cas, sometimes someone named Bobby. Sometimes Dean begged, and those were the worst nights. Benny only ever heard Alastair and please those nights.

"So what happened to you?" Benny asked Dean after a bad night, the human sitting beside him with his knife clenched in his hand.

Dean laughed harshly. "You're gonna have to be more specific."

Benny didn't look at Dean. He just kept his eyes on the shifting shadow a couple hundred feet away.

"I'm asking what Alastair did to you and how you learned how to make someone scream so pretty."

In his peripheral Benny saw Dean's hand go white around the handle of his knife.

"None of your goddamn business."

"Aw, don't be like that. Your hollering is gonna get us all killed if you don't deal with it, brother."

Dean examined the blade of his knife. Benny waited. He'd learned since meeting Dean that it was easier to wait the human out. There was a lot they didn't have down here, but they didn't lack for time.

"I spent some time in Hell," Dean said at last. He seemed to think that explained it.

Maybe it did, to him. Benny shrugged, resigning himself to a messy death because of the human's dreaming. They were silent until something rustled above them and they returned to fighting for their lives.

Dean started telling Benny little pieces of information after that. Sometimes they were trivial and sometimes they were profoundly disturbing.

_ I sold my soul for Sam_.

Benny tore the throat out of a warped, melting humanoid.

_ I made my first sawed-off when I was ten_.

Dean took the head off a Leviathan and Benny got a faceful of black goo.

_My car is a 1967 Chevy Impala. _

Benny asked if Sam was older or younger than Dean.

"Younger. By three and a half years. He's taller than me though."

_Cas fell for me_.

Dean got his ribs sliced open by a shapeshifter before Benny got to him.

_Alastair used to tell me Sam was down there too. He took my eyes so I couldn't check_.

Dean carried Benny three miles after Benny dodged too slowly. The human talked to him the whole way, telling him about Hell in sing-song. Benny didn't ask if Dean knew he was talking.

_Cas always wears a trenchcoat. Looks like a frickin' tax accountant._

"Where's the angel?" Dean asked the werewolf he'd pinned to a tree. Benny closed his eyes for just a moment as the screaming started.

_Sam went to Stanford. Full ride. He's always been the smart one._

Benny watched Dean sew up his own arm with a bone needle and hoped humans couldn't get infections in Purgatory.

_Sam used to see Lucifer everywhere. Cas said he saw everything._

They hunted down a crocotta on the off chance it had heard anything. Dean got sick from its meat and Benny had to try to keep him still long enough to recover.

_ I don't know if I want to leave anymore. But I can't leave Sammy alone._

The longer they spent slaughtering their way through Purgatory, the more at ease Dean became.

"It's easy down here," Dean told Benny. "No angels, no demons, no real choices, just survival."

"There's one angel down here," Benny reminded Dean.

"He's the good kind, though," Dean said. Benny didn't ask.

He wasn't the religious type.

He wouldn't have pegged Dean for one, either, except sometimes Benny caught Dean praying.

Dean found his angel eventually.

Benny was glad he and the human could finally leave, but Castiel was a nutcase and he made it much harder for Benny to predict what Dean was going to do.

Beny never quite figured out what Castiel and Dean were to each other. They spent an awful lot of time staring at each other and avoiding personal communication. It wasn't any of his business, though, as long as it didn't keep him here.

It was love. That was all Benny needed to know.

Castiel was admittedly very handy in a fight.

Benny wasn't surprised when Castiel stayed behind. For all that Dean had seemed born to hunt Purgatory's forests, Castiel had seemed to consider himself the kind of monster who belonged there, even if Dean didn't.

Dean brought Benny back to life and they went their separate ways, just as they'd planned. Benny wondered if Dean was having as much time readjusting to Earth as he was. Benny couldn't relax without Dean watching his back.

Dean had Sam to watch his back. Dean was probably fine.

Dean was probably fine, except Benny hadn't forgotten how well Dean had blended into the grey forests of Purgatory, and sometimes he wondered if Dean would be able to live without the purity of the kill.

When Benny called Dean, the human said he was fine and that it was best they stayed away for a while.

Benny felt his fangs slide down as he smiled.

His brother would find him if he needed him. For now, let Dean pretend they didn't need each other.

Monsters always found each other in the end.


End file.
